The Face of Gabriel
by Symmet
Summary: Post Apocalypse. Gabriel either survived or was revived. Inspired by a wikipedia picture of Gabriel.
1. Chapter 1

**AN: The cover to this story is from wikipedia, so this is the first time I haven't drawn one. This story has Sam with drawing skills. If I'm not lazy, I'll probably draw the pictures being referred to out because that was mostly the point of describing them. Inspired by the 12th century depiction of curly haired Gabriel who looks literally nothing like our Gabriel. Probably Sabriel.**

* * *

After the apocalypse that wasn't, everyone sort of wasn't sure what to do with themselves. Sam and Dean decided to take a two year break. In reality they weren't sure how long it would last, but two years seemed like a good vacation. Of course, they could only go so long without nearly driving themselves mad not hunting anything. They managed to stay at Bobby's for about a month before they were tossed out on their asses. Then Castiel sent Balthazar to help, and, well, they bought a big white house and maybe some very endowed politicians noticed some of their funds went missing, but all in all not so bad.

Dean couldn't last longer than two weeks without going for an extensive drive in the impala and hunting something, so he sporadically took jobs from Cas. Sam decided against trying to finish law school. It would be hell faking an _actual_ identity, and that seemed like a far away time when he'd thought he could run away from his fears instead of face them.

Anyways, he took to learning how to draw.

It was a stupid, pleasing past-time - nothing serious, just simple and stress free. He never mentioned it to anyone, of course.

Castiel returned to heaven and tried to work through things there. Then Raphael tried to bully him back into submission. He refused and was subsequently beat down. He showed up to their house, ordered them to stay, covered the place in so many sigils Dean swore they should pay him for the paint job (he didn't even stop to ask what Dean meant), and wouldn't ask or even let them help.

The only reason they stayed put was because he practically begged them to. Dean made him promise not to do anything stupid (then, apparently, after Cas left, Croweley showed up and tried to haggle him into a deal - for Purgatory! what the hell?! Naturally Castiel told him to shove it.) and then the waiting game was on. Three weeks. Dean was about to run up the walls from boredom when Castiel showed up with the most unlikely person ever.

Well, not a person per se.

Dean almost shut the door on Gabriel's grinning face (_of course, he had insisted that they arrive and enter normally, "Cassie, it's more dramatic this way." "I do not understand. We are not trying to be dramatic."_). But, after all the yelling, shouting, and crying (Gabriel made everyone cry, including Castiel, because he was disappointed with the dismal amount of drama he'd received upon his arrival. Sam had secretly been glad that Gabriel had returned, especially if it was to help Castiel with Heaven. Gabriel had looked up at him and winked. _Freaking mindreading_) had stopped and they had all sat around the small round coffee table with steaming mugs of hot cocoa (courtesy of one archangel), everything was explained.

Raphael was now more inclined to believe that God was not so much dead as purposefully missing in action as it was entirely out of either Michael's or Lucifer's abilities to raise an archangel - especially from the pit. Also, considering that fact that Lucifer had killed him in the first place... Naturally Raphael was stubborn, but he'd relented when Gabriel went 'The Archangel of Judgement' on his ass, and now Heaven was slowly trying to fix itself and decide what to do.

The most relieved was Castiel, who had "No idea how to explain free will to the others. It was...frustrating. Explaining freedom to angels is a bit like explaining poetry to fish." (Gabriel howled at that, laughed until there were tears in his eyes, clapped a confused Castiel on the back, who kept saying, "No, Gabriel, you are an archangel, your stomach cannot physically hurt from laughter." in bewilderment every time Gabriel insisted that he couldn't breath. Which only made Gabriel laugh harder.)

All in all, it was pretty good. Even if a partially insane trickster-norse god-archangel visited on the weekends.

And no matter how much Dean complained, they knew they really weren't bad off.


	2. Chapter 2

Sam was looking through an extensive text on angels (he may have wanted to learn Enochian. Of course, it was nearly impossible to find in human texts. He was loathe to bother Castiel, and afraid to get Gabriel's attention. Especially since the archangel had pent up trickster mojo that Raphael mostly forbade him to use. He was getting_ twitchy_, according to Dean, who, along with Sam, now together dealt with at least the one prank a week. Of course, the hunter didn't mind too much, as Castiel immediately chided Gabriel and 'fawned' over him, as Sam took to saying when the angel wasn't around to hear it, much to Dean's annoyance in general) when he just completely lost interest with a groan and randomly flipped to somewhere in the middle.

To his surprise he landed on Gabriel's page. Everything in here was from 'direct' biblical sources (although there was thereafter a bunch of writing on the author's part like synopsis and speculation and such), so he already knew just about everything - back when the apocalypse had been on and no one knew exactly what was happening except that angels were involved, they'd gone on a bible kick.

But the thing that drew his attention - and a snort - as he turned the book on his lap and chuckled was the image of a curly haired drawing of Gabriel. It was strange looking already, because it wasn't necessarily drawn realistically, but the expression - and hair, espcially - was just so different from the Gabriel he knew. Sam grinned to himself. This Gabriel looked like an awkward teenager with a really bad perm. Sam laughed quietly to himself and put the book back on the table. Waited a moment before sliding it into one of the drawers, instead. He wouldn't be looking at that for a while.


	3. Chapter 3

He only realized he was drawing a realistic (and maybe kind of attractive) Gabriel when Castiel happened to see him drawing in his sketchpad and, peering over his shoulder, murmered a thoughtful, "hm". Defensive of his artistic talents as well as of the fact that Dean didn't know and Castiel might tell him, he shut it immediately.

"What?" He said, twisting in his chair to look warily at the angel. "Also, don't tell Dean that I draw, please.", he added as an afterthought.

Castiel frowned, "Why?"

"Because he would probably find it immasculine and then make fun of me for it."

"But it's not-"

"I know. But it's Dean. Remember how he reacted when I asked for a hint of lemon in my salad that one time?" Of course Castiel remembered. He had 'angel memory banks' as Dean said.

"Ah." Castiel said, "I understand. Very well, I will not tell him." nodding so seriously in his mission to protect Sam's feelings that Sam almost forgot to ask around his grin, "Anyways, what was it?"

Castiel turned to leave when they heard Dean call from downstairs - giving Sam a resolute nod of promise - and said off-handedly, "It is the spitting image of Gabriel when he last had a vessel I knew."

Sam spluttered.

In that moment he realized he'd started drawing Gabriel all over his sketch-pad, and he was horrified. Well. He supposed it could be worse, he could have added _wings_. He was embarrassed to admit to himself that he had considered it several times, as a sort of joke about knowing actual angels. Instead of touching that, he said, "Wait, you knew Gabriel back then?"

Castiel paused, "No, but we saw the archangels from afar. It was...the body he supposedly died in when he went missing." His face flickers into one that is slightly stony and cold, hurt, and Sam is sure that all of Heaven mourned, even the younger siblings who hadn't known him. Dean called again, and the expression slipped off, "I will not speak of it to Dean." The angel promises soberly, causing Sam to drop the severity of the previous thought and break into a grin, "Thanks, Cas. Appreciate it."


	4. Chapter 4

He'd taken to drawing the character even more now. He was almost offended with himself, but what could he do? He'd liked the caricature before he'd learned it resembled a certain annoying archangel, and he wasn't going to drop it just because it looked like Gabe used to. Of course, then he started drawing it as if it was Gabriel, and then he kind of accepted it shamelessly.

It was cute, in a way.

He'd draw the 'person' (he still refused to accept that he was drawing a archangel because it was really a boy.) doing silly things or in strange poses - sometimes to amuse himself, and others for practice.

_That's the great thing about him_, Sam thought one day as he decisively sketched the boy conversing animatedly with a donkey, _he's very versatile_._ He gets into all sorts of situations_. Sam smiled to himself as he completed it with a small speech bubble from Gabriel ending some ridiculous account of a prank that was no doubt true.

But it wasn't always humorful. It could be quiet and thoughtful, too. If Sam was feeling like practicing with lights and darks, or simply less comical art, he'd do it.

On another page he'd drawn the boy looking a bit forlornly from the roof of an old church adorned with snarling gargoyles. The boy was sitting straddled on one, looking over an oblivious city caught in a grey and windy day (it was all in pencil, so of course it would be grey, but Sam hoped he rendered distasteful weather well enough), small silhouettes of people walking the sidewalks below, hunched against a drizzle and the winds, some with umbrellas, all in long flapping coats.

The next page he'd adorned with (_finally!_) a winged one. He'd decided against asking Castiel if archangels actually did have three pairs of wings, and instead, gave the drawing just one pair. He suspected it was three pairs total, however many they wanted visible at will (Which he annotated besides the drawing), but he'd decided on two wings because they were much more individually expressive and the boy had a funny, laid back sort of pose, probably sightseeing in a dis-attached, entertained sort of way, amusing himself by pointing out the sort of silly things humans did or said. Since it didn't take up the entire page and Sam had neglected to draw in a background of any sort, he went along and added some more drawings around the edges. Underneath he drew a short four panel comic in which Gabriel was introduced to candy when a random person stuffed a lollipop into his mouth and he swooned.

Sam snorted, then, with a sigh, put it away. Dean was getting back from a hunt with Cas, and he wanted to make some food so that Dean wouldn't get the angel to snap up some pizza. He was thinking pasta.


	5. Chapter 5

Sam opened the door to his room to find an archangel perched on his desk looking at his sketchpad. The first couple of seconds processing that was a frozen reaction of complete and utter mortification. Then he reminded himself that he really had no reason to feel that way, and forcing himself to relax, to somewhat mixed results, sighed, walking forward and trying to grab the sketchbook in Gabriel's hands, "what are you doing?".

Without looking up, the archangel pulled it out of momentary reach (and even sitting on the desk it was well within grabbing space for Sam, because Gabriel was short and he was tall), and Sam noted in an accepting sort of way that he hadn't gotten past the first couple of pages where there were landscapes and fruits and other boring practices.

Eventually he would get to people, and then to the section devoted to the Gabriel who Sam refused to accept was Gabriel.

"Heeey, Sammy, you're quite the artist." Gabriel said, "Castiel wasn't kidding."

Ignoring the compliment, because that was weird, Sam sagged and gave up, "Aww, the traitor. He promised not to tell."

Gabriel looked up then, with an almost apologetic smile, "You guys agreed he shouldn't tell Dean-o. If it helps I set him straight about what you probably meant. He might be avoiding you for a while, either out of mixed feelings of failure or embarrassment." He shrugged, then looked back at a page Sam had watercolored to disastrous results. It was of a cloudless afternoon Sam remembered having spent two days after Castiel had set them up for house arrest back before Gabriel had showed up. Gabriel looked out of the window as if to match them, but Sam already knew it was from a different angle.

As if coming to the same conclusion, or perhaps reading Sam's mind, Gabriel shrugged and turned to the next page. Sam made another half-hearted attempt to swipe it out of the archangel's hands, but again, the archangel just pulled it away, completely ignoring the frustrated hunter.

Sam threw up his hands in a dramatic - and unacknowledged - gesture, sighed long-sufferingly, then went and collapsed in the armchair by the window and stared out it, waiting.

Sam could leave, but he almost felt nervous.

He wanted to know what Gabriel thought.

Of the sketches.


	6. Chapter 6

He sensed the moment Gabriel came to the first drawing, a head bust of a curly haired youth staring down, expression more or less untellable. It had been sketchy and tentative, unsure of exactly who it was becoming but edged along as if some invisible force wasn't...guiding it per se, but nudging it along.

Sam kept his mind - and face - purposefully blank when the soft shift in the atmosphere occurred. He supposed that was the angel equivalent of an intake of breath. He felt his nervousness racket up when the page slowly turned, fought the urge to hover behind Gabriel and try to critic his own work. He'd never really gone back to look at or fix it.

He felt the pause, too, and suddenly remembered that he had drawn, at the bottom of the page Castiel had seen, the third one of Gabriel, in tiny cartoon, a person slumped over a notebook (him) in a chair and a serious trench coated man with folded angel wings (Cas), and written above, "OF COURSE it's Gabriel." semi-sarcastically. Then, besides it, smaller, "typical" and, under, after a few moments consideration, "oh well. fuck that."

Gabriel chuckled softly at that, then flipped the page. Immediately the air charged again, cold and electric and making Sam feel light-headed. He couldn't blame Gabriel for being shocked. The first three pages devoted to a nameless, unknown youth had lacked direction and seemed sort of lost. When he'd had an identity, a personality to give the boy, he sprang to life, the drawings were no longer erased or contemplated before being drawn. Sam knew who he was and how he'd do things. And he didn't really think of it as Gabriel because the boy was too innocent, too naive.

He'd also been, for a few small sketches, too hurt and angry at the world, his loss still fresh and painful, his wrath and judgement still divine, even as he denied it. In some, Sam had curiously dredged up his sparse norse god knowledge (okay, so maybe it wasn't _sparse_. But he wasn't exactly an expert, either) and drawn loki interacting with the other gods.

Eventually Gabriel got to the page with the comic, and murmured softly, almost in surprise, "These aren't half off, you know. About me."

Sam couldn't hold back the undignified snort that rose at that, "You went around Mexico telling donkeys about your favorite pranks?" Actually, that didn't surprise him. Gabriel had probably been lonely. He saw Gabriel's expression twitch and added silently in slight annoyance, _The only company that understood him were other asses!_ though it was all bark and no bite. Gabriel's face twitched again, but this time into a smile, unwilling and mischievous all the same. "Anyways," The archangel continues, "you got the candy thing wrong."

Sam stared thoughtfully out the window, "Yeah, that was..." He tilted his head, gaze unfocused on the clouds outside, "actually, yeah. It was probably someone you helped out, back when you weren't entirely a behind the scenes player. I...was it a boy? You'd reveal yourself to a kid, I think. He probably wanted to give you something because you were friends, not just because you helped him. I'm guessing it was an abusive father...but...huh, maybe it was in thanks. But not entirely for himself. He might have had a mother... or a little sister..."

He was getting lost in the story when he suddenly found Gabriel right in his face, staring at him intently.

Gabriel had stilled in surprise when the story began, then, seeing the expression on Sam's face, froze.

Sam had not looked quite like Sam in that moment. There was a knowing, a truth and a sight that was generally beyond humanity, etched in his eyes, looking upon a past long unthought of. It had struck Gabriel, right in his grace, and he had dropped the book on the desk and was walking up to the human before he was completely aware of making that decision.

Sam snapped out of it, and immediately that wisdom retreated, drained from his eyes as he looked up in shock at the archangel kneeling at the foot of his chair and grabbing his wrists.

"Gabe, what?"

"C'mon." Gabreil breathed, ignoring him, and saying more to himself as he stared intently into the hunter's eyes,"Where did that come from and where did it go?"

Sam started, blinking and leaned back, trying to reclaim a certain amount of personal space between their faces, "Uh?"

Gabriel seemed to relax - although Sam had the sinking feeling that Gabriel was just pretending to. "Sorry, Samster." Said Gabriel distractedly, rising and releasing his wrist.

"Wait, Gabe -"

"I gotta go, gigantor, but I'll keep in touch." Gabriel said, walking towards the door. Unheard by Sam was the capricious addition of, O_h, you can bet on it!_

"_Gabriel_-"

but the archangel was already gone.

Sam stared at the empty air for a couple minutes before he heard a shrill alarm ring downstairs.

"Shit, the pasta!" He mumbles, coming out of his daze and dashing out and down the stairs.

He doesn't realize that the sketch pad is no longer on his desk.


End file.
